Bad Press
by elaiel
Summary: Damn gossip rags get everywhere. (follows "When a plan comes together" and is the 4th in the PHSE series)


This follows "When a plan comes together" and is the 4th in the PHSE series

* * *

Clint's feet kicked against the wall of the building, bouncing his bow a little where it rested across his thighs. He was sat on the edge of the roof looking down on the scene, surplus to needs and able to relax now things were over, better occupied watching over the scene in case anyone tried to wander in than down there getting in the way.

On the ground, Captain America was talking to a bunch of traumatised civilians whom Tasha and he had finally managed to evacuate from the train carriage they had been trapped in. They seemed to be managing reasonably well Clint thought. No-one was seriously injured or crying on their knees. This was New York though and the people here were pretty sturdy.

SHIELD personnel began to move in, in suits and SHIELD uniforms, talking to people, leading them away, checking out smashed machinery and moving to where, a little way away, Iron Man and Thor were working on the track. Thor, pretty much electric-shock proof and under direction from Stark, was disconnecting power from the third rail by hand so the crews could start to work. As soon as this was done the SHIELD techs swept in like worker ants, moving debris, clearing broken robot dogs from the railroad.

Thor and Iron Man were still helping shift debris and Clint could see Stark making basic repairs as he went along and he guessed that it wouldn't take too long – comparatively to most train track disruptions of a vaguely terrorist nature – to get the train line up and running again once it was cleared by SHIELD.

Tasha was talking to Sitwell next to the corpse of the wannabe super villain who had caused all the disruption in the first place. Unfortunately he had killed himself rather than be taken in to face justice. Hulk was standing behind Sitwell glowering down at the corpse, apparently for his temerity in putting himself permanently beyond the reach of being smashed any further.

Clint put his fingers in his mouth and let out a low whistle. Hulk's head shot up and looked at Clint. Clint shrugged and beckoned. Hulk crouched and jumped, Tasha and Sitwell turning and tracking his movement until he landed surprisingly gently by Clint and lowered himself to sit on the edge of the roof next to Clint, bare green feet hanging next to Clint's but several inches below.

"Clint okay?" Hulk said, looking down at him and sniffing him.

Clint looked up at Hulk. "I'm good."

Hulk frowned and took him by the jaw between a huge thumb and finger, carefully turning his head to look at the side of Clint's temple where a piece of debris had clipped him. It was a graze, but Hulk leaned in to examine it and gave it a sniff.

"It's just a scrape." Clint said. "Not even bleeding anymore."

Hulk huffed, but let him go. He stiffened a moment as Hulk put an arm round his shoulders, then relaxed.

"Chilling out after the fight, huh?" He asked Hulk.

"Uh-huh." Hulk agreed noncommittally.

Clint leaned into Hulk's side a little, still watching the scene, there was a stiff breeze up here and Hulk was a good windbreak and put a lot of heat out which was more than welcome now he wasn't moving and the adrenaline was wearing off. Hulk gave a deep hum and relaxed.

"You wanna stick around and get dinner again?" Clint asked.

"Food good." Hulk agreed. "And juice. Hulk like juice."

"'Kay, sounds good."

A repair crew from the rail company turned up, waiting on the side-lines almost directly below Clint and Hulk for the scene to be made safe enough for them to enter. Hulk wrinkled his nose as the smell of cigarette smoke floated up.

It was another twenty minutes before Clint's comms came on with something relevant.

"Hawkeye." Steve's voice was relaxed. "Let Hulk know, we're done here."

"Be down in a sec Cap."

Hulk shifted. "Go home?"

"Yep, time to go home big guy."

Clint swung his legs round, ducking under Hulk's arm to stand on the roof. Hulk looked over his shoulder.

"Meet you down there?" He asked Hulk.

"Hulk take Clint." Hulk said, and stood, sweeping an arm around the back of Clint's legs.

Clint found himself sat in the crook of Hulk's elbow facing into his chest. He looked up. Hulk grinned at him and the arm Clint was sitting on shifted to press Clint's head into a large green pectoral muscle. Clint wrapped his arm round Hulk, bow out of the way behind them.

There was a sudden shove and drop. Clint's stomach went out from under him and he let out a whoop, adrenaline kicking back in with a slam. A bounce, rocketing in another direction, a second bounce and almost immediately a thump of sudden deceleration as Hulk landed, cushioned only by a deep bend of Hulk's knees. Clint was glad Hulk had supported his head, whiplash injuries were not fun at all.

Hulk carefully put him down and grinned at him again. "Clint down." He said smugly.

"Whoa, that was awesome!" Clint said.

"Even faster than abseiling." Tasha noted.

"Oh yeah!"

He punched Hulk gently on the arm and Hulk reached over and very gently ruffled his hair eliciting a laugh from both Tasha and Sitwell. Steve smiled at them.

"Good to see you still here Hulk." Steve said with a broad smile at the giant.

"Hulk stay with Clint." Hulk said. "Hulk stay for food."

"Great!" Steve said. "We can all have dinner together?"

"And juice." Hulk nodded.

xxxoooxxx

It was rare these days that he got called in for a meeting with Fury. His job had changed significantly since the Avengers Initiative had come into full being, and he was much less regularly at Headquarters or on the Helicarrier, especially now he had the range that Stark had made them all to practice on.

It seemed a little weird to be walking through the corridors in jeans and a jacket as well, but he was officially "on call" not on duty, so didn't need to be wearing uniform. He'd kept the boots though, they were comfortable and it had taken ages to wear them in, he wasn't going to waste time wearing in a casual pair for no reason.

He presented himself to Fury's secretary, one of the three who worked in shifts in the outer office, semi-evil-guardians-of-the-inner-sanctum that they were. The man gestured him in.

"He's waiting for you agent."

Clint walked in. Fury was sitting behind his desk.

"Barton, get over here." Fury demanded, holding out a magazine. "What is this?"

Clint recognised the name, it was the same one that had been so exuberant after the Chitauri battle in vindication of its prior claims that aliens existed and had subsequently done a particularly bizarre "exposé" of Thor. There been some interesting claims about his "alien anatomy", which according to Selvig and Darcy had made Jane Foster almost wet herself laughing.

Clint took the magazine, looking at the pictures on the front page. Taken with a long lens the pictures were grainy and indistinct but even despite this, the figures in the pictures were still unmistakably him and Hulk. The first - and the main - picture was of Clint and Hulk sitting on the edge of a roof. Clint's bow rested across his lap and Hulk had an arm round his shoulder. It was obviously the scene from the suicidal-robot-dog-villain encounter. It was captioned "_Shocking revelations from scene of Avengers latest fight!_"

"A week ago." Clint said without looking up. "Carson Murphy and his robot dogs."

"Tell me something I don't know." Fury said.

The other two photos on the front were similar, one of Clint and Hulk face to face on the roof at the moment before Hulk had picked him up and the other of them standing with Natasha and Steve by the railroad tracks. "_More shocking photos inside! See Page 12 for full story!_" He opened the magazine to page 12.

The largest photo was effectively the back of Hulk's head and was captioned "_Hulk and Hawkeye in secret romance?!_" Clint stared at it, momentarily speechless.

"Hulk was looking at where I got cut by debris." He said looking up at Fury. "This is just bizarre!"

He passed a finger over the almost disappeared scab on his temple then looked down again. The other photos were similar, one almost identical to the first just with Hulk's head at a slightly different angle and another of him being carried by Hulk, sat on Hulk's arm looking up and then in movement, his head pressed into Hulk's chest by a large green hand.

"And he gave me a lift down." He added. He looked up again and put the magazine down on the table. "You know that. It was in the mission report, we report all positive and negative mission interaction with the Hulk."

"You can see this is causing somewhat of a stir though." Fury said sardonically.

"It's crap." Clint said. "Seriously, are you kidding me? Apart from the point where he's a huge green rage monster, Hulk's like, the least likely person to get into an office romance ever."

"Looks pretty compromising on paper."

"Oh come on!" Clint said in exasperation. "This is the Hulk. He's like a teenage kid, if even that! I'm friends with the big guy."

"And Doctor Banner." Fury said.

"I'm friends with him too. I stay over in his suite sometimes…" He caught Fury's look. "On the damn sofa! We are categorically not fucking."

Clint tossed the magazine back down on the desk.

"I'd expect this sort of publicity from Stark, it even wouldn't surprise me for this sort of magazine to have a go at denting Captain America's all-American image, but I'd pretty much expected you to stay in the background, _Specialist_ Barton." The job title was a pointed addition.

Clint shrugged. "I was sitting on a building watching over the scene, what do you want me to do?"

"You're a SHIELD agent."

"I'm an Avenger, I lost any fucking hope at anonymity when you assigned me to this gig."

"I had limited choices of SHIELD agents who would realistically be able to work with the team members already assigned."

Clint shrugged. "I was nearing the end of my usable career as an undercover agent anyway. You get too well known among the usual suspects, and I'm no Black Widow am I? Doesn't stop the sniper detail."

Fury regarded him.

"Look." Clint said flatly. "If there _was_ anyone I would have chosen to break SHIELD's fraternisation regs for, it's certainly not the Hulk."

"Too late now." Fury muttered.

Clint sucked in a breath, Fury wasn't looking at the magazine.

"Sir." Clint asked stiffly. "Is this interview over?"

Fury looked up at him and there was almost a look of sympathy in his eye for a microsecond. "Yes Agent. This interview is done. There'll be some media work needed after this."

"Obviously." Clint said.

"Dismissed."


End file.
